Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical

Social animals are provisioned with pro-social orientations that transcend self-interest. Morality, as used here, describes human versions of such orientations. We explore the evolutionary antecedents of morality in the context of emergentism, giving considerable attention to the biological traits that undergird emergent human forms of mind. We suggest that our moral frames of mind emerge from our primate pro-social capacities, transfigured and valenced by our symbolic languages, cultures, and religions

This brief response to Goodenough and Deacon’s essay “From Biology to Consciousness to Morality” sets forth Michael Polanyi’s criticism of evolutionary ideas of his day. It analyzes Polanyi’s approach to biology and suggests there are affinities with the provocative evolutionary sketch Goodenough and Deacon provide of the development of the human capacity for moral experience.

Placing Goodenough and Deacon’s “From Biology to Consciousness to Morality” against the background of the ethical naturalism of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British moral theory, Yeager highlights the contribution the authors make to the moral sense tradition as well as indicating the limitations of such accounts of moral agency, judgment, and conduct. Yeager also identifies two strands of the essay that seem to open toward a more comprehensive account than the authors actually give. The first concerns the “interplay between self-interest and pro-sociality,” and the other concerns the ethical implications of coevolution. On the latter point, the work of G. H. Mead is offered as an illuminating contrast.

The other articles in this issue plus other recent articles on Polanyi’s ethics have helped clarify Polanyi’s distinctive contribution to ethical theory. This article seeks to integrate these insights with Polanyi’s somewhat diffuse treatment of ethics by suggesting what features would be included in a distinctively Polanyian moral point of view. Grounded in psychological satisfactions, social dynamics, and values and ideals regarded as real, Polanyian ethics incorporates features of deontological, utilitarian, and virtue ethics and would support a practice of moral discovery.

Illuminating letters by Barbara Striker and Bela Hidegkuti respond to Walter Gulick’s review of David Cesarani’s book, Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind in Tradition and Discovery 29:2 (2002-2003), 50-55. The letters and accompanying commentary shed light on the details of Eva Striker Zeisel’s USSR imprisonment and release, her relationship to Arthur Koestler, the lives of George and Barbara Striker (Polanyi’s nephew and wife), and the circumstances and sources of Cesarani’s biography.

In this paper, I attempt to create a dialogue between the Wittgensteinian tradition and the Polanyian tradition concerning the understanding of the concept of tacit knowledge/knowing from the perspective of the problem of articulation. Norwegian philosopher Harald Grimen argues for a distinction between the strong thesis of tacit knowledge and the weaker theses of tacit knowledge. The former highlights the logical gap between our knowledge and our capacity for verbal articulation, which is not the case for the weaker theses. Inspired by this important distinction, I claim that there are actually two meanings of Polanyi¡’s concept of tacit knowledge/knowing. Finally, I try to bring out the relevance of the ongoing discussion on tacit knowledge/knowing to contemporary Chinese philosophy.